Man with developmental disabilities settles wrongful conviction for $11.7 million

A developmentally disabled man who spent more than 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder has reached an $11,725,000 settlement with the city of Elkhart, Indiana, his attorneys said Friday.

The man, Andrew Royer, said he “went numb” when he first heard of the settlement.

“I’m a brand new person,” Mr. Royer, 48, said in an interview on Saturday. “I’m ecstatic.”

A jury convicted Mr. Royer of the 2002 murder of a 94-year-old woman, Helen Sailor, who was found strangled in a high-rise apartment in downtown Elkhart. Mr. Royer was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

Law enforcement officials said it was a burglary that turned violent, but there were problems with the prosecution’s case from the start.

Mr Royer’s lawyers argued on appeal that he was interrogated for two days and coerced into making a false confession without a lawyer.

In Mr. Royer’s confession, he seemed unsure of many details. the Indy Star reported in 2017. Furthermore, there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.

Lana Canen, a co-defendant and friend of Mr. Royer, had her conviction overturned in 2012.

During the first trial, Dennis Chapman, an Elkhart County detective, provided evidence that Ms. Canen’s fingerprint was found at the crime scene. When an appeal lawyer had the fingerprint examined again, it did not match.

A witness who placed Ms. Canen and Mr. Royer in the victim’s apartment later recanted her testimony, saying that she under pressure from the police.

“Sometimes I feel guilty – I don’t want to go back, but I feel like: why am I gone and not him?” Ms. Canen told the IndyStar in 2017. “Because I know he didn’t do it.”

In March 2020, Mr. Royer was granted a new trial after a judge ruled that Mr. Royer’s statements were “unreliable” and “involuntary.” The following month, Mr Royer was released from prison.

“We had lost hope,” Jeannie Pennington, Mr. Royer’s mother, said Saturday. “We didn’t think this would ever happen.”

The state appealed the ruling, and in April 2021, the Indiana Court of Appeals issued a blistering decision affirming the lower court’s ruling for a new trial.

The Court of Appeal found that the investigating detective, Carlton Conway, had given false testimony at the first trial when he said that he had not prompted Mr. Royer to repeat details of the crime scene and that Mr. Royer himself had offered, without pressure from the police. Police.

The court said Mr Conway ‘withheld the truth’.

“When law enforcement officers lie under oath, they ignore their government-funded training, betray their oath of office and signal to the general public that perjury is something that should not be taken seriously,” the court said. wrote in his decision.

Mr. Conway resigned months later, after Elkhart’s police chief wanted him fired. In July 2021, the state filed a motion to dismiss the case. No other arrests have been made in Ms Sailor’s murder.

Mrs. Pennington said of her son that it had been “amazing for me to watch him turn into a wonderful man.”

“When he came out in 2020 it was a perfect moment because everything shut down,” Ms Pennington said. “And when everything opened up, so did he. He kind of came along with the process. And so he didn’t have all those problems that people have about introduction into society at once.”

A representative for the city of Elkhart did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. In a statement to the IndyStarMayor Rod Roberson said, “The Roberson Administration and the Police Department are committed to building positive relationships with the Elkhart community.”

Elkhart reached a $7.5 million settlement last year with Keith Cooper over his 1997 wrongful conviction for a robbery for which he was sentenced to prison. for more than eight years.

Mr. Royer, who lives in Goshen, Indiana, said that since his release from prison he had gone on a trip with his church to rebuild homes in disaster recovery areas.

“It took me a while to get used to it,” Mr. Royer said of his freedom. ‘But now I’m better off, and I have family with me. I am no longer in the gloom.”